


Mundane

by tastewithouttalent



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: M/M, Masturbation, Mirrors, No Plot/Plotless, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Secret Crush, Sexual Fantasy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-15
Updated: 2018-02-15
Packaged: 2019-03-14 07:32:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13585275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tastewithouttalent/pseuds/tastewithouttalent
Summary: "And then Steve catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror, and all his idle imagination gives way to shock as he startles at the image of a stranger in his reflection." Steve takes a few minutes to appreciate his transformation and revisit familiar fantasies.





	Mundane

The new body is strange.

Steve knew what to expect. He was told, at least, amidst the endless warnings and worried gazes that seemed as ready to steer him away from his decision as towards it: this is a test, the results are uncertain, failure is a very real possibility. But there were expected outcomes there, too, mentioned offhand, as if to keep from drawing him into enthusiasm before understanding the dangers: strength, speed, power enough to actually make a difference in a world that has always seemed ready to crush Steve out of it. Steve knows what he’s agreeing to: danger, mostly, and a possibility to change the flow of the war valuable enough to override that. It’s not the strength or the power that persuade him; he thinks he’d make a pretty poor candidate if they did. But he did know what to expect, if everything went according to plan; and now, in the quiet calm after the storm that broke with the conclusion of the experiment, he has time to investigate the results.

He’s taller than he used to be. It’s a silly thing to focus on, given everything else that has changed about him with the addition of the serum that turned all the weakness of his body to strength; but it’s the most noticeable change, to Steve’s eyes. He looms over people around him, now, has to duck through some of the more cramped doorways; everything seems smaller and lower than it was when the leather straps tightened down around his frail chest. Steve feels overlarge, clumsy and awkward in the world around him even as his body moves with a strange, agile grace he’s never known before; it makes him move more slowly, careful not to bump into the objects around him as he makes his way around. And that’s just his height. The other differences are more pronounced: the ease of his movement, the simplicity of motion that seems to be urging him into a loping run, simply for the efficiency of rapidly covering more ground. The weight of his shoulders, the way his shirt clings oddly tight to his body every time he shifts his arm or lifts a hand. Even his breathing is easier, as if his chest has expanded and cleared itself of the asthma that has always tightened his throat and strained in his lungs before now. It’s strange to feel, as if the world itself has grown lighter, as if the pressures Steve had always taken as a given in life have evaporated along with the scrawny, struggling form he bore before.

He retreats to his room as soon as he can. There are things to do first off: there’s a slew of reporters, to start with, and the tragedy of the attack takes precedence, from the army’s perspective. Steve is caught between the two of them, dizzy from his physical changes and overwhelmed by the situation; it’s only once they set him free that he is left to set his own path, and then it’s straight down the hallway for his quarters. All he wants is a few minutes of privacy to shut his eyes and let the events of the last few hours settle into his awareness; responsibility comes first, of course, but there’s still a deep relief that hits him with the sound of the door latching shut behind him to give him a few minutes of quiet.

Steve leans back against the support behind him, shutting his eyes as he takes a slow, deliberate breath and lets it out. His thoughts are spinning, his feelings are in chaos; he doesn’t know what he’s feeling most strongly, between panic and thrill and fear and loss. He could cry, he thinks, if he set himself down the path of grief; he will, later, once he’s had the time for everything to sink in with its proper weight. It will be the strongest emotion eventually, he’s sure, and the one that will linger longest; but right now, above anything else, Steve has to admit his heart is beating fastest on curiosity. He’s tried out the strength of his new body already, has put it to work enough to know the new, impossibly distant limits of the form that is his, now, as much as his narrow shoulders and rasping lungs used to be; but his image of himself is still the underfed, frail person he’s been his whole life, and more than anything else Steve wants to know what he looks like.

He steps forward from the door, straightening to stride across the narrow space of the room set to serve as his, for the short period of time he merits his own quarters. That was in expectation of the experiment, before; Steve wonders vaguely if he’ll be returned to the rest of the army from here, if he’ll rejoin his fellow soldiers in the barracks or on the frontlines, now that he’s become capable of keeping up with them on his own merit. Maybe he’ll be able to join the fight properly, he thinks as he reaches for the hem of his t-shirt and tugs it up and over his head; maybe he’ll be able to face down some of the evil in the world alongside the men he struggled through training with. Maybe he’ll even be able to join a familiar unit, maybe he’ll be able to see Bucky again; and then Steve catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror, and all his idle imagination gives way to shock as he startles at the image of a stranger in his reflection.

It’s not a stranger, of course. He can see that almost as soon as he’s turned, while his breath is still catching to shock in his chest; his face is still his own, his eyes and mouth and hair still the same familiar shape and color they always have been. But if his face is clearly his own the rest of him looks like it belongs to someone else entirely, from the breadth of the shoulders to the strength of muscle raising to definition across his abdomen. Steve stares at his reflection, feeling a little like he’s looking at someone else standing across the room from him rather than at his own image; it’s dizzying to see the hand in the glass shift as he flexes his own arm, disorienting to feel the pressure of his fingers against his skin as he touches against the flex of muscle across his stomach. He huffs a breath at the contact, startled into the beginnings of ticklishness in spite of himself, but he doesn’t pull his hand away; he keeps drawing up instead, feeling the strange sensation of fingers dragging against his body as he watches the hand in the mirror work up over a stranger’s chest. Steve tracks the motion, drawing up to touch against the line of collarbones hidden underneath muscle, now, where they’ve always stood out in stark relief before; and then his attention jumps up, his gaze meeting the wide-eyed stare of his own expression in his reflection. He looks confused, alarmed, a little bit excited; his eyes are wide, his lips are barely parted. That’s familiar enough, that expression of uncertain hesitation; but then he looks down again, and all familiarity gives way even as he slides his hand back down over himself.

He looks good. Steve can recognize that objectively; he has a body fit to compete with any of the men he’s admired in the past, strong and broad enough to fit right in on any of the recruitment posters he used to drink in like cool water on a hot day. There’s something exciting to the thought, to the idea of becoming the ideal he has spent his whole life reaching for; some part of Steve feels certain this must be a fantasy, some too-vivid daydream that Bucky will soon shake him out of. The thought makes him huff a laugh and cracks amusement across his mouth as his hand trails back down over his body; he can almost imagine Bucky’s raised eyebrow, can almost see Bucky’s quirked lips.

“Don’t worry about me,” Steve says to the quiet of his room, letting his words drawl into self-deprecation as he outlines the dip of his waist and comes down to touch against the line of muscle at his hip, just over the weight of his pants. “I’m just daydreaming about becoming an American hero.” The words are absurd at his lips, they make him huff a laugh as much at his own expense as anything else; but then he blinks, and his image comes back into focus, and laughter dies off to the shocked silence of reality at his lips once more.

“Oh,” Steve breathes, hearing his voice tremor in the back of his throat over the impossibility that has become his truth, now. “Jeez.” He drops to sit down at the edge of the bed behind him, landing heavily and without trying to catch himself; when he leans forward it’s to press his face into his hands, to hide his vision and his reflection in the shadow of his fingers for a moment while he tries to catch his breath. His mind is whirling, his shoulders are shaking; and then he takes a breath, and he feels it knot in his stomach, and he realizes what has gripped him so tightly even before he opens his eyes to stare at the light spilling through his spread fingers.

It’s unmistakable. New body or no, Steve is hardly going to misidentify the feeling of arousal sweeping up through his veins; he’s certain even before he tips his head down to look at the tent he’s making of the loose of his pants. He huffs an exhale, a little bit horrified and a little bit amused at his own reaction to what is, after all, his own body; but he can’t deny his response, and there’s no one else here to see. Steve tips his head to glance towards the door, feeling his cheeks heat even as he considers the action he intends to take next; but he’s reaching for the hem of his pants without hesitating, as instinct steps in to take the place of cool rationality.

This is probably one of the stranger things he’s done, Steve thinks as he pushes his pants down his hips by an inch and reaches to curl his fingers around the (thankfully familiar) shape of his cock flushed hard with the mingled adrenaline and appreciation his reflection has brought on. He’s had a whole host of fantasies he’s made use of in the past -- inventions of his own, and movie stars, and more than once faces more familiar than he’s entirely comfortable admitting -- but this is definitely the first time he’s been turned on by his own reflection. But it doesn’t look like him in the mirror, even as he glances up through his lashes to catch a glimpse of himself; and if he looks like a recruitment poster brought to life, well, those same posters provided more than a few nights of relief back home in Brooklyn. It might be a strange variety of narcissism to indulge in this just at the moment; but then, it still doesn’t look like his body in the reflection before him, even as Steve settles his hand into place and starts to stroke over himself, and besides there’s no one here to see his indulgence. It’s a relief for himself, after a day more dramatic than most people have had; and so Steve rocks himself back, bracing himself with a hand against the sheets behind him, and he sets himself to the familiar process of jerking himself off while he fixes his gaze firmly on the graceful shift of the unfamiliar form reflected back at him by the mirror.

“This is the weirdest thing you’ve ever done,” Steve says aloud, watching the words form themselves at the lips of the image in front of him even as he feels them rumble against the inside of his chest, as he hears them take on the shape and tone of his own voice. The laugh that breaks from him is part embarrassment and part uncertainty; the flush across the face in his reflection is one of the most familiar things he has seen since he arrived.

 _Bucky would laugh to see me_ , Steve thinks, the thought idle as his fingers slide up and over himself, as his attention dips over the flex of muscle in the chest --  _his_  chest -- reflected back in the glass.  _Getting off on your own body, that’s a first, Steve_. For a moment Steve can see the curve of a dark eyebrow raised over shadowed eyes, can imagine the quirk of Bucky’s lips and even the drawl of his voice over the words; for a moment it’s as if he can see Bucky here in front of him, as if the other is standing at the foot of his bed in place of that uncanny reflection that’s facing Steve right now. Steve’s breath rushes from his lungs, his hand tightens on himself; and his blood rushes to heat, flaring out as if it’s become an open flame in his veins. His cock surges hotter in his hand, swelling harder even than it was before; for a moment Steve’s rhythm stalls as his attention drops down to his hand fisted around himself and the flushed dark of his cock in his grip. He stays there for a second, heart racing and breath catching; and then he heaves a sigh, feeling his shoulders go slack with resignation without needing to watch the motion in his mirror.

“Well,” he says. “Alright then.” And he lifts his head to look at himself again, fixing his attention to himself with a distant, objective consideration as he resumes the pace of his motion in time with the unravelling of a fantasy in his head, the outline familiar but the details shifting as smoothly as his body has. Bucky’s face is easy to conjure, the sound of Bucky’s laugh and the heat of his touch a simple thing to recall; but when Steve looks at himself now it’s with the imagination of Bucky’s gaze on him, it’s with the distant clarity of someone else considering his new form. Gone are the skinny shoulders, the bony wrists, the too-visible ribs; Steve is all muscle now, strong across his back and narrow at his hips, where the line of muscle draws his attention down to the stroke of his hand around himself. He wonders what Bucky would think, what Bucky would say, to see him now, like this: he’d laugh, probably, that weird breathless laugh he always gets when he’s unsure of himself or a little uncomfortable. Maybe he’d want to come in closer, to look for the shape of his old friend under the new strength, to press his hands against the proof the way the reporters and scientists did after the experiment; and Steve whimpers over an exhale, his hand moving faster as his imagination invents callused fingers pressing against his chest, as his fantasy overlays his reflection with the span of Bucky’s hand against him, Bucky’s knee alongside his hip, Bucky’s head ducking close over his shoulder. He can almost feel the touch against him, can almost hear the rush of Bucky’s breathing against his ear curling in and against the tangle of his hair; it’s as if every inch of his body is coming alight just at the thought, as if all that extra breadth and height was just to give him more possibilities for sensation, more opportunities for touch. Steve can imagine the way Bucky’s lips would curl against the side of his neck, can call up the way Bucky’s hand would fit against his shoulder as the other would lean in against him:  _jeez, Steve_ , in Bucky’s ragged drawl, that teasing lilt that kept Steve warm through so many winter nights,  _didn’t you save some for the rest of us?_  and it’s the thought of that, of that held-back amusement crackling in Bucky’s voice, that brings Steve jerking against the pull of his hand, that drags a whimpering cry from his throat as he comes. His head goes back, his fingers tense to a fist against himself; and his fantasy gives way, the image of Bucky disintegrating as his coherency melts to the pulses of heat splashing over his fingers and up against his stomach.

Steve’s heart is still racing when he collects himself enough to lift his head again, to open his eyes and consider his reflection in the mirror. Nothing about his appearance has changed; he’s still carrying those absurdly broad shoulders, still layered over with the tan skin and solid muscle better suited for his childhood fantasies than for the reality that he has resigned himself to live in. The only thing that is different is the mess spattered wet over the tension of his stomach, and the forward hunch of his shoulders, and the self-conscious color rising to stain his cheeks to a pink far more familiar than the actual form of the body he has now. Steve looks at himself for a long moment, taking in the whole of his appearance reflected back at him in the glass; and then he lifts his head, and fixes his gaze on his face, and he heaves a sigh that falls somewhere between a laugh and a whimper.

“Well,” he says aloud. “At least not everything has changed.”

It’s surprising how much comfort that thought brings.


End file.
